Don't let the programmers or hardware engineers have much of a say in the initial design of the hardware or the software interface. Too often too many PDA companies make the mistake of letting the technical people get first crack at the design, and by that time any kind of human factors design has been reduced to something crudely bolted on at the last second. You should always design an interface/form factor before you ever write a line of code, design a circuit, or set up an injection molder. Keep in mind that the most successful PDA in history, the Palm, was created after its designer carried a block of wood wherever he went to get the idea of how a PDA should act and feel.
Study child psychology. If you have a multi-million dollar budget, hire someone who does research in that area. Children will be interested in different kinds of things at different stages of development and will have different styles of play. If you know the characteristics of their stage of development, you have a better chance of designing a product they would be interested in and you would have a better idea of just how they might interact with that product.
In the March 1997 issue of ACM's HCI journal Interactions , there is an article titled User Interfaces For Young and Old. Read this. The author discusses some of the pitfalls of technology products geared for young children. One of their best points is that computerized stuff for kids often lacks any real kind of tactile interaction, which is incredibly important for children of a young age. Another good one was that you have to be careful that the PDA does not revert children into little solitary beings like most computer software does.
Don't limit yourselves to a PDA form factor. It would be cool if you had something a little like Lego mindstorms that was really modular and would allow children to communicate in different ways if it they reassemble it differently. Put one block here, it communicates with another child's creation across the world. Take that block out and put another one it, and it communicates with the machine next to it. Something like that might create more effective play and communication between children than simply "Palm Jr". Pardon the cliche, but "Think Different".
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Don't let the programmers or hardware engineers have much of a say in the initial design of the hardware or the software interface. Too often too many PDA companies make the mistake of letting the technical people get first crack at the design, and by that time any kind of human factors design has been reduced to something crudely bolted on at the last second. You should always design an interface/form factor before you ever write a line of code, design a circuit, or set up an injection molder. Keep in mind that the most successful PDA in history, the Palm, was created after its designer carried a block of wood wherever he went to get the idea of how a PDA should act and feel.
Study child psychology. If you have a multi-million dollar budget, hire someone who does research in that area. Children will be interested in different kinds of things at different stages of development and will have different styles of play. If you know the characteristics of their stage of development, you have a better chance of designing a product they would be interested in and you would have a better idea of just how they might interact with that product.
In the March 1997 issue of ACM's HCI journal Interactions , there is an article titled User Interfaces For Young and Old. Read this. The author discusses some of the pitfalls of technology products geared for young children. One of their best points is that computerized stuff for kids often lacks any real kind of tactile interaction, which is incredibly important for children of a young age. Another good one was that you have to be careful that the PDA does not revert children into little solitary beings like most computer software does.
Don't limit yourselves to a PDA form factor. It would be cool if you had something a little like Lego mindstorms that was really modular and would allow children to communicate in different ways if it they reassemble it differently. Put one block here, it communicates with another child's creation across the world. Take that block out and put another one it, and it communicates with the machine next to it. Something like that might create more effective play and communication between children than simply "Palm Jr". Pardon the cliche, but "Think Different".